


I Heard The Bells

by cookami



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Gen, Heero thinks a lot, do not hold your breath for updates, eventual 1xR, holiday fic, when you don't realize you have a crush
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:33:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29089848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookami/pseuds/cookami
Summary: In the immediate aftermath of Libra's destruction, Heero contemplates Relena and next steps. Re-interpretation of a scene from Ground Zero.
Relationships: Relena Peacecraft/Heero Yuy
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19
Collections: Gundam Wing Holiday Matters 2020





	I Heard The Bells

**Author's Note:**

> There is a scene in Vol 1 of Ground Zero where Heero remembers a conversation with Relena just after Libra's destruction. This fic reinterprets and expands upon that moment.

_Then rang the bells more loud and deep_

_God is not dead, nor does he sleep (peace on earth, peace on earth)_

_The wrong shall fail, the right prevail_

_With peace on earth, good will to men_

-I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day 

* * *

**25 December 195**

This corner of the satellite with the wide bubble window is hushed, far away from the corridors brimming with refugees, medics, wounded, and dazed soldiers from disbanded factions. 

I listen to my breathing while watching the Earth through the fortified glass. My knees are bent, one drawn up toward me, and I sit alone on a bench underneath the wide curving pane. 

Wired tight, I'd come seeking quietude as a balm for my nerves and to quell the phantom movements that played in the corners of my eyes. Zero was still slithering around in my head, testing my control and fraying the edges of my identity. Even when we get along, the fucking suit is a menace. 

When I found this place, the solitude here let me close my aching eyes under Earth's watchful aspect. The stillness gave the lie to the feinting threats Zero threw at the peripheries of my perception. In the silence, my body and consciousness uncoupled. Tension leached from my muscles, golden flashes of prescient AI faded from my mind's eye, and my heartbeat steadied. When I came back to myself, I was a basin drained of turmoil. It was good to be empty for a while. 

But it’s enough now. Slowly, I allow the basin to fill again with cursory self-knowledge: bruises from the cockpit harness are tender across my chest and thighs; I’ve pulled a muscle somewhere behind my shoulder; cold sweat mats my scalp and makes my skin clammy in the cool air. The satellite’s artificial gravity keeps my butt on the bench but in my mind I’m weightless, drifting untethered in space.

The quiet is merely pleasant now and Earth is mesmerizing in the distance. The only sounds in the recycled air are my even breaths—until familiar footsteps draw near. 

I turn toward Relena when she enters the small viewing bay, and nod back when she gifts me a smile.

“Merry Christmas, Heero. You really did fulfill the old song: peace on Earth, goodwill toward men.”

I don't know what she means, but she’s not looking at me for a response. Standing at the far side of the window, she too is gazing at the blue and green planet framed by the black expanse and winking stars.

“The Earth is always lovely,” she says, its distorted reflection glinting in her eyes. “No matter what horrors it witnesses, or births, it will always be bigger.” 

She hesitates a moment. “That was the last thing my father taught me before he died, you know: ‘Relena, never forget how beautiful the Earth looks from afar.’ I’m still not sure what he meant by it. Maybe to put the horrors in perspective, or to think twice before creating them.” 

A glance toward me. “It doesn’t matter though; it’s true. I’m _so_ relieved that Earth is safe.”

What the hell do I do with that? How do I respond to this mention of her father, who Noin credits as the man we all can thank for Relena’s extraordinary convictions and drive? Relena’s grief always activates my guilt: Darlian’s assassination reminds me of my own role in Noventa’s. We’d all still be shooting at each other if Darlian had lived though. Peace requires Relena, and Darlian’s death was her catalyst. 

However. This moment isn’t concerned with requirements, certainties, or even reality. Suspended in time and space, it’s a pocket of absurdity: Warring factions are mingling cooperatively a few hundred meters from where a nameless child soldier sits with the equally young Queen of the World. I’m exhausted but can barely remember why, as if I haven’t just ended the biggest battle in human history by blowing up a battleship in atmo. I don’t even know what day it is—I _always_ know what day it is—and in this strange headspace I don’t even care. 

Inside the pocket, watching Relena at the window, struggling to wrestle the warmth of her father’s memory away from the pain of his murder, it doesn’t matter to me what Peace requires of her: I regret that Darlian is dead. I wish he were here now to do whatever it is that fathers do for stoic, sad-eyed daughters, because I’ve got no fucking clue how to comfort her myself. If my training had included a mental mechanism for switching between Weapon and Boy, I could at least be a real human being for her. It’s not the only thing J didn’t bother with. 

Before I figure out what to say, she turns toward me again, expression brighter. “Thank you for saving Earth.”

Without asking, Relena sits across from me on the window seat, stretching her legs out parallel on the narrow bench. Her feet rest a handspan away from my own, which seems very close given the battle-nerves I’m still shaking off. Together we quietly watch the Earth float and debris drift. Transports flash across the inky void of space. 

Does she feel as adrift as I do in the aftermath of Libra’s destruction? Are her bare legs cold? From a certain angle, her pale knees hang like orbs in the window’s reflection. White moons. I’m bouncing into and off of errant thoughts. Like this one: That skirt she wears is a singularly impractical piece of clothing for a space station, let alone a war zone, but impractical clothes never seem to hinder her. Why would they? There isn’t a practical thing about her.

Relena appears ornamental—fragile, like the flower that little girl gave me—until she starts blowing up plans and expectations and world orders wherever she goes. Fragile like a bomb, more like.

At length, she breaks the comfortable silence with an unbelievable, irrefutable observation, “The war is over.”

“I know.” We ponder the significance of this. Relena is the first person I’ve talked to since leaving Zero in the hangar. I’m surprised by how convincing it is to hear the words out loud. _The war is over._

The war is _over._

Our exchange echoes in my head, solidifying the idea further with each repetition. We’ve spoken softly, but our voices cut through the muted air. The war is over. If the echoing lasts long enough—until, say, the moon reappears from behind the Earth—I might really believe it. 

Relena watches me curiously, thoughtfully. She is alway thoughtful with me. “You won’t have to kill anyone ever again.” What she doesn’t add is _Unless you want to keep fighting_. _Do you?_

“Probably not.” What I mean is _Hopefully_ _not. Let me be done._

“So what are you going to do?” she asks, as if it’s not the weightiest question anyone’s ever laid on me. Her eyes are very direct, very probing, and very blue. 

In this mindset, infused with adrenaline, built on absurd realities and unbelievable truths, it isn’t hard to look back at her. Before today’s battle, that was always vaguely uncomfortable. Relena challenges me, constantly, to do and be more than what I know I am. She pushes so relentlessly, subtly—sometimes I think even unconsciously—and ( _damn it_ ) successfully that she keeps infiltrating and messing with my head even when I haven’t seen her in months. 

She’s discomfiting. 

Meeting her gaze before was something I’d do to keep my emotional idiosyncrasies tightly contained. I’d been taught to give them no quarter, that habit as well as vigilance would prevent them from undermining my reliability as a weapon. But right now, looking at Relena while I consider her question is easy. At this moment, she’s restful.

The words are slow to form, but I know they are right as I say them. “I’ve never lived in a world without war. But I thought…that maybe I’d try to live in this one. That’s all I can say for now.”

The words hang in the air between us. Like the war’s end, hearing it spoken out loud makes the possibility real in a way that just thinking about it did not. I _will_ try to live in a peaceful world. Fuck if I know how, but I’ll give it a shot. If only to spite J’s memory. 

The wide smile she barely contains in response to this is encouraging. Her lips press together but the corners of her mouth dimple and her cheeks grow as round as Earth’s peaches. The skin around her eyes crinkles where laugh lines will form in 30 years. I’m not sure why she tries to hide it. 

I... _want_ to see that smile. I care about that way it makes me feel: proud and satisfied, like I did something right. It feels like I earned it, like it’s mine. A thought that sounds like Duo wonders what else I could earn in a peaceful world. 

Instead Relena ducks her head and stretches in place. Her ears disappear into her shoulders and her pointed toes stretch toward me, while her hands flex at right angles against the bench and press away from it. She releases on an exhale, rolls her shoulders like she’s shrugging off a heavy load, and settles back against the wall, relaxed. Relena doesn’t quite give into the smile but happiness spills out of her now in a way that I can’t quite describe. It’s infectious though, and I’m content too. 

Relena twists in her seat, drawing her knees in and leaning her head against the glass to look outside again. She says, “I want to say that you should come stay with me, but it’s a selfish wish. You should see with your own eyes this world without war that you helped to make. But, Heero—I hope to see you again soon. It would be sad not to.”

I don’t reply to this, even though she glances away from the window to gauge my reaction to her invitation. I don't know where I'll go yet. There’s no sister or girlfriend or dynastic family to go back to, like some of the others have. My connection to Relena is tenuous, based more on idealism and desperation than knowledge and trust. 

It could be something to start from though. 

Relena reminds me of Quatre, and a little of Trowa. She shares the optimism and faith in humanity that guided Quatre through the war’s chaos. Except for when Zero fucked with his head, Quatre never lost sight of what he was doing and why. Relena, too, once she set on her path, never wavered. When her pacifist experiment failed, Sanq’s collapse delivered her to the wolves. Instead of fleeing—or fighting—she talked to them like they were men and transformed them into agents of her vision. It’s more than the rest of us can say—without the backing of the colonies, we stumbled alone through the war like blind men. 

The likeness to Trowa is harder to pin down. Best I can do is that they bring me back to a still, clear well I drank from in a village outside Marseilles. The water was the freshest I’d ever tasted. It eliminated the lingering fatigue from my injuries and renewed me, though I’d felt old and used up. The surface was smooth as glass and I could see straight down, every crack and stone rendered in detail, until the shadows in the depths obscured the walls. The ripples I disturbed rose like waves against the flat surface, but the water quickly absorbed them, returning to balance, as if they had never been. Relena, Trowa—they carry within themselves a deep reservoir like that, a source of nourishment and equilibrium. 

I trust Quatre and Trowa, and the parts of them I see in Relena. I trust Relena’s intentions. She’s a human grenade, but one given to unobtrusive kindnesses and seeing the best in people. It’s impossible to tell what the new world will look like once she gets to work, but she’ll try to make it kinder. More just. 

I still don’t get what she sees in humanity. People at large, the people she will be relying on to make her vision real, are weak-willed. And individual lives don't stop being cheap just because someone at the top sets new value on them. The people on Earth and in the colonies aren’t heroes in ordinary clothes. Relying on them to do the right thing, in aggregate, should make a fair and peaceful world a futile effort. 

But. 

Relena not only disagrees, her existence confounds me. She manages to be valuable and strong even though she’s just one naive girl, with soft-looking skin, white knees, weeping wounds on her heart, and stupid clothes. The weak-willed public has chosen to support her instead of established political or military might, amplifying her power. Relena wills things into existence. Maybe she’ll do it to conjure the support necessary to keep the peace. 

Relena might know something I don’t. She’s proven me wrong at almost every turn so far. It’s not such a stretch to believe she’s got some mystifying insight into people. If it means the peace will last, if people will be better, if I am worth more than the weapon I was made to be, I wouldn’t mind being wrong. 

So perhaps I should try to trust the girl herself. If I stick around, despite the inevitable discomfort, I might eventually discover what she sees inside us, and me specifically, that fuels her certainty of a better future. 

Relena is still looking at me, waiting for my response. Promises are not my strong suit though, and like hell like hell I'll let myself get mired in more political scheming. J, the CLO, Operation M—what a _clusterfuck_. I don't even know what they are yet, but her plans could drown me. For now, I’m better off directing my own missions...projects? 

She's not J though. Not even close. So, yeah, seeing Relena sometime soon—on my terms—wouldn’t be a bad thing. I don’t answer her, but I feel myself smile like I did before leaving her on Peacemillion, when I’d expected to die fighting her insane brother. 

Relena returns it with one of her own and, when we both turn back to that lovely, faraway planet, she begins to hum a melody. Her voice, when she switches to the words, reminds me of the clear, high church bell that rang Sunday mornings across the valley from the school in Sanq.

_The wrong shall fail, the right prevail_

_With peace on earth, good will to men._

There is peace on Earth and in the stars right now, and goodwill among men who never had any before. Maybe, with Relena’s help, we can do something with it. Maybe, with her help, I could figure out how to live in a world without war.

**Author's Note:**

> Big thank yous to everyone who contributed their thoughts and advice. In no particular order: gemstonecircles, a_Special_Unicorn, Diane, Experimental, picimadar, the Black Rose, 2pcb, hiddencait, Keylee the Cat, and Ramona the Kitten.


End file.
